"Giorgione is regarded as a unique figure in the history of art: almost no other Western painter has left so few secure works and enjoyed such fame..." Sylvia Ferino-Pagden.

My website, MyGiorgione, now includes my interpretations of Giorgione's "Tempest" as "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt"; his "Three Ages of Man" as "The Encounter of Jesus with the Rich Young Man"; Titian's, "Sacred and Profane Love" as "The Conversion of Mary Magdalen"; and Titian's "Pastoral Concert" as his "Homage to Giorgione".

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

In my last post I revisited my interpretation of a painting by Giorgione that has been lost but that still exists in seventeenth century copies. It is usually called the Discovery of Paris but I have argued that it is a depiction of the legendary encounter of the Holy Family with robbers on the flight into Egypt. I also believe that it is one of the two "notte"that Isabella D' Este sought to purchase in 1510. Below I reproduce my discusses of the two paintings with an addendum about Vittore Beccaro, the owner of the one that Isabella's agent called "finer in design and better finished".Late in 1510 Isabella D’Este, Marchesa of
Mantua and renowned art patron, tried to acquire a Giorgione painting only to
discover that the young master had just died. Nevertheless, the indefatigable
collector persisted. On October 25 she wrote to Taddeo Albano, her agent in
Venice:

“we hear that among the possessions left by
Zorzo da Castelfranco, the painter, there is a picture of a Notte, very beautiful and original. If
this is the case, we wish to have it, and beg your Lorenzo da Pavia or any
other person of taste and judgment to go and see if it is a really excellent
thing. If it is, I hope you will endeavor to secure this picture for me… Find
out the price and let us have the exact sum; but if it is really a fine thing,
and you think well to clench the bargain for fear others should carry it off,
do what you think best…”

Albano replied on November 8:

“Most illustrious and honoured Madama mia,--
“I have spoken in your interests
to some of my friends who were very intimate with him, and they assure me that
there is no such picture among his possessions. It is true that the said Zorzo
painted a Notte for M. Taddeo
Contarini, which, according to the information which I have, is not as perfect
as you would desire. Another picture of the Notte
was painted by Zorzo for a certain Vittore Beccaro, which, from what I hear, is
finer in design and better finished than that of Contarini. But Beccaro is not
at present in Venice, and from what I hear neither picture is for sale, because
the owners have had them painted for their own pleasure, so that I regret I am
unable to satisfy Your Excellency’s wish.” *

Since that time scholars have not
been able to agree on the identity of the two paintings mentioned in Albano’s
letter. Neither have they been able to agree on what Isabella or Albano meant
by “notte” since the word hardly
appears elsewhere in descriptions of paintings.

However, from the correspondence
we can say that both paintings were commissioned: “the owners have had them
painted for their own pleasure.” The one that was not as “perfect” as Isabella
would have desired was done for Venetian patrician, Taddeo Contarini. The other
“notte”, the one “finer in design and
better finished,” was done for Vittore Beccaro, of whom nothing else is known.
Not only was Beccaro out of town at the time of Isabella’s inquiry, but he
seems to have completely disappeared from history.

Some scholars have argued that
Isabella used “notte” or night scene
to mean a Nativity or “presepio.”
They have suggested that the Adoration of the Shepherds now in the National
Gallery in Washington is the more perfect version, and that the same painting
in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is the less perfect one since it is obviously
unfinished. This explanation hardly seems plausible since it is impossible to
imagine that a patron like Taddeo Contarini would have prized an incomplete
painting. Moreover, Isabella knew a Nativity when she saw one. A few years
earlier when she corresponded with Giovanni Bellini about a Nativity, she never
called it a “notte.”

David Teniers: copy of a lost Giorgione

In 1525 Marcantonio Michiel saw a
painting in the house of Taddeo Contarini that could be called a night scene.
Michiel noted that it represented “the birth of Paris in a landscape, with two
shepherds standing.” He said it was by Giorgio di Castelfranco,” and indicated
that it was one of his “early works.” Recently, Enrico dal Pozzolo suggested
that this painting, of which only copies remain, was the one mentioned by
Albano. He also suggested that the “more perfect” “notte” might be a “Hell with Aeneas and Anchises,” a painting that
is now completely lost but which had somehow found its way into Contarini’s
home by 1525. **

Pozzolo noted that a discovery of
Paris coupled with an Aeneas and Anchises would mark the beginning and the end
of the whole Trojan saga. However, this hypothesis is based on a
misinterpretation of the “Discovery of Paris.” I have argued elsewhere that
this lost Giorgione is a depiction of an episode on the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt. It is clear that in this early work Giorgione relied on a
text from the apocryphal Arabic gospel of the Infancy.

Even from the copy of the
“Discovery of Paris” done by David Teniers in 1655, we can see that it is not
one of Giorgione’s most perfect works. This early effort seems crude in comparison
with his later work. Since I have argued that Giorgione’s most perfect
painting, La Tempesta, is also a
depiction of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, I believe it is safe to say
that it was also the “notte”, “very
beautiful and original,” that Isabella unsuccessfully sought to acquire right
after Giorgione’s death in 1510.

Finally, I would like to speculate
on the identity of Vittore Beccaro. Enrico dal Pozzolo suggested that the name
implies that he might have been a butcher but it is hard to imagine, given
Giorgione’s patrician patrons, that the Tempest was commissioned by an ordinary
tradesman. It is true that Taddeo Albano claimed that Vittore Beccaro was the owner of the beautiful “notte”. But Albano got his information second or third hand from acquaintances. It is clear that he did not know the owner or even see the painting. At my age, it is easy to imagine that Albano could have rendered the name somewhat incorrectly.

Instead I would like to advise students to look in the direction of Bologna whose
leading citizens included the Zambeccaro family. I also believe that some members of the family fled Bologna for Venice after Pope Julius II drove out the ruling
Bentivoglio family in 1506.

At least one of the Zambeccaro was
an art collector. In his biography of Franceso Francia, Giorgione Vasari said
that Francia was a close friend of Polo Zambeccaro.

He lived in close intimacy with
Messer Polo Zambeccaro, who being much his friend, and wishing to have some
memorial of him, caused him to paint a rather large picture of the Nativity of
Christ, which is one of the most celebrated works that he ever made; and for
this reason Messer Polo commissioned him to paint at his villa two figures in
fresco, which are very beautiful.***

The status of Polo
Zambeccaro enabled him to commission a painting from a renowned painter like
Francia. Moreover, he asked for a sacred subject, a Nativity, for his own
private devotion. Polo Zambeccaro would have been the type of person who could
have asked Giorgione, the up and coming favorite of the Venetian
aristocracy, for "a picture of a Notte, very beautiful and original," a painting that would later be called the Tempest. It is still not for sale at any price.

###

*Isabella’s correspondence with Taddeo Albano can be found
in Julia Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua,
1474-1539. London, 1932. For the Italian text see Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione,
The Painter of Poetic Brevity, p. 362.

**Enrico dal Pozzolo: Giorgione, 1999, pp. 33-35.

***Vasari, Giorgio: Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and
Architects, translated by Gaston Du C. De Vere, with an introduction
and notes by David Ekserdjian. 2V, Everyman’s Library, 1996. Vol. 1, 581.

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

A “lost”
Giorgione painting which has been misidentified for almost 500 years can shed
new light on the work and career of the most mysterious and perhaps the
greatest of all Venetian Renaissance painters.

In 1525, fifteen
years after the death of Giorgione, Marcantonio Michiel noticed a painting in
the home of Venetian patrician, Taddeo Contarini, and described it as a
“picture on canvas, representing the birth of Paris, in a landscape, with two
shepherds standing.…” Michiel noted that it was one of Giorgione’s “early
works.”[i]

This
painting has been lost, but copies exist from the seventeenth century. The
editor of the 1903 translation of Michiel’s notes cited a description in an
“old manuscript catalog of the time.”

A landscape on canvas, in oil, where there are on
one side, a half nude woman and an old man, seated, with a flute.[ii]

One of the copies, made by David
Teniers around 1655, is currently in a private collection but was discussed in
two recent catalogues. The authors of both catalogues agree that it is a copy
of an early Giorgione and also accept, although with some puzzlement, Michiel’s
identification of the painting as “the birth of Paris.”[iii]
However, details in this early Giorgione indicate that it has quite a different
subject than the one imagined by Michiel.

The subject
of this “lost” Giorgione comes from a legendary episode on the flight of the
Holy Family into Egypt. Here is the version from the apocryphal “Arabic Gospel
of the Infancy.”

Joseph and the lady Mary departed and came to a
desert place, and when they heard that it was infested with raids by robbers,
they decided to pass through this region by night. But behold, on the way they
saw two robbers lying on the road, and with them a crowd of robbers who
belonged to them, likewise sleeping. Now these two robbers, into whose hands
they had fallen, were Titus and Dumachus. And Titus said to Dumachus: ‘I ask
you to let these (people) go free, and in such a way that our companions do not
observe them.’ But Dumachus refused and Titus said again:‘Take from me forty drachmae and have them as a
pledge.’ At the same time he reached him the girdle which he wore round him,
that he might hold his tongue and not speak.[iv]

In
Legends of the Madonna Anna Jameson called the encounter with the
robbers an “ancient tradition,” and added another detail. After the acceptance
of his offer, “the merciful robber led the Holy Travellers to his stronghold on
the rock, and gave them lodging for the night.”[v]

The
landscape in the background of the painting is commonplace in depictions of the
Flight into Egypt. The stream is often seen in versions of the “Rest.” It was
used by the Madonna to either bathe, or to wash the swaddling clothes of her
Son.

Bathing
might explain Mary’s exposed leg and arms but the disarray of her clothing
could also be Giorgione’s way of representing her obvious danger from the
robbers. In a painting now in the Hermitage Giorgione exposed the thigh of
Judith, the famous Jewish heroine whose virtue was also threatened.[vi]
In any case Mary sits with her back to Joseph with her eyes intent on her Son,
her real protector. Joseph is portrayed as an elderly graybeard as in
Giorgione’s well-known Nativities. The infant Christ lies on a white cloth and
returns his mother’s imploring look. The white cloth recalls the corporale, the cloth used to cover the
altar on which the Eucharist is placed.[vii]

The two men on the right side are
not shepherds but robbers. A Giorgione shepherd would be kneeling or bending
over the Child in adoration. The one with the red jacket has just convinced the
other to leave the Holy Family in peace. He has taken off his “girdle” leaving
himself somewhat exposed and given it to the other who is in the process of
fixing it around his waist. The band of robbers can be seen lounging in the
middle ground. Joseph’s flute recalls the well-known verse from Juvenal: “A
wanderer who has nothing can sing in a robber’s face.”[viii]

In “The
Encounter with the Robbers in the Desert” Giorgione did not attempt to hide the
subject of that early work. If no one has recognized its subject from Michiel’s
time to ours, it is because the very popular apocryphal legends have largely
been forgotten. Early in his career Giorgione was working not on a pagan
subject derived from the legend of Paris but on a depiction of an apocryphal
legend based on the Flight into Egypt. Moreover, he showed an inclination, even
at this early stage in his brief career, to depict the Madonna in a very
unusual way.###

*** The above is part of a post that was one of the first to appear at Giorgione et al... back in 2010. I reproduce it here for new readers. It can also be found at MyGiorgione with my other major papers on Giorgione, Titian and the Venetian Renaissance. In the past seven years I have seen or read nothing that would make me want to change my interpretation of this lost Giorgione.

[i]The
Anonimo, Notes on Pictures and Works of Art in Italy made by an Anonymous
Writer in the Sixteenth Century, ed. George C. Williamson, London, 1903. p.
104.

[iv] Extract
from the Arabic Infancy Gospel in Edgar Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha,
edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher, English translation edited by R. McL. Wilson,
Volume One, Philadelphia 1963. p. 408. On the web a search for theFirst
Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus, Chapter. VIII, will give the story with
slightly different wording.

[v]Jameson, Legends of the Madonna,
Boston, 1885. pp. 361-362. Mrs. Jameson noted that the encounter with the
robbers has been “seldom treated” as an artistic subject but did indicate that
she had seen two representations. “One is a fresco by Giovanni di San Giovanni,
which, having been cut from the wall of some suppressed convent, is now in the
academy at Florence. The other is a composition by Zuccaro.” In a later edition
she provided a sketch of the Zuccaro “Encounter,” which shows Joseph assisting
the Madonna down from the Ass at the behest of the armed robber.

[vi] In
Judith’s famous prayer she recalled her ancestor Simeon who took vengeance on
the foreigners “who had undone a virgin’s girdle to her shame, laid bare her
thigh to her confusion…” Judith 9:2, Jerusalem Bible.

[vii] For
the corporale see the discussion of
Titian’s Pesaro Altarpiece in Rona
Goffen,Piety and Patronage in Renaissance
Venice, Yale, 1986, p. 114.

[viii]
Juvenal, Satires, X, 22. I thank Dr. Karin Zeleny of the Kunsthistorisches
Museum in Vienna for the Juvenal reference.